The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows - Expanding our emotional awareness.

[Bluegazer]

I saw that a forum user had made a mention about this topic, at another time but it has not had much attention.

But I think it deserves attention now. Throughout this year, whether because of the situation and state of the world, the "pandemic" that there is a roller coaster of emotions, hyperkinetic sensations and a thread dedicated to romantic fiction where reading confronts us with strong emotions with the purpose of elevating and somehow understanding and cleansing us, I see that within all those emotions there are ranges, extensions of these that are difficult to understand or catalog. I myself have encountered feelings that I cannot give meaning to, due to various circumstances.

In the search I found The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

“Creates beautiful new words that we need but do not yet have.” — John Green, author of The Fault in...

www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a website and YouTube channel, created by John Koenig, that defines neologisms for emotions that do not have a descriptive term. The dictionary includes verbal entries on the website with paragraph-length descriptions and videos on YouTube for individual entries. The neologisms, while completely created by Koenig, are based on his research on etymologies and meanings of used prefixes, suffixes, and word roots. The terms are often based on "feelings of existentialism" and are meant to "fill a hole in the language", often from reader contributions of specific emotions. Some videos involve a large number of photographs, such as the video for Vemödalen, which uses an "almost exhausting—yet seamless—fusion of 465 similar photos from different photographers". Other videos are more personal, such as Avenoir, which involves a "collage of his own home movies to piece together an exploration of life’s linearity".

If we can give a name to these elusive emotions, perhaps we can do a much more refined job with respect to our emotional center.

Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

A compendium of invented words written by John Koenig, that aims to fill holes in the language—to give a name to emotions we all feel but don't have a word f...

www.youtube.com

 

[Bluegazer]

A few examples:

flashover​

n. the moment a conversation becomes real and alive, which occurs when a spark of trust shorts out the delicate circuits you keep insulated under layers of irony, momentarily grounding the static emotional charge you’ve built up through decades of friction with the world.

Moment of Tangency: A Glimpse of What Might Have Been​

If two lines are truly parallel,
it means they’ll never actually meet.

kuebiko​

n. a state of exhaustion inspired by an act of senseless violence, which forces you to revise your image of what can happen in this world—mending the fences of your expectations, weeding out invasive truths, cultivating the perennial good that’s buried under the surface—before propping yourself up in the middle of it like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams but powerless to do anything but stand there and watch.

​

 

[axj]

April 28, 1996

Q: (L) Ah! So, you are saying that people who can clear the emotional traps can unite in a higher emotional sense?

A: Emotions are chemicals only

I think it is important to distinguish clearly between emotions (emotional center), physical body sensations (eg. exhaustion), mental body states (eg. boredom) and energy sensations.

Chemical emotions seem to be pretty simple variations of 1) joy, 2) sadness, 3) anger and 4) fear.

Love, gratitude and so on seem to go deeper than emotions, into the energetic realm. That is where there is a lot of varierty of energies and energy sensations:

- sensation of Self (the 'driver' of the 'body vehicles')
- Higher Self energies
- etheric body (aura)
- chakra energies and kundalini
- energy blockages and 'karmic' energies

 

[Bluegazer]

I think it is important to distinguish clearly between emotions

Love, gratitude and so on seem to go deeper than emotions, into the energetic realm. That is where there is a lot of varierty of energies and energy sensations

Okay, it's true. Now let's see it like this: Deep emotions that enter into the realm of the energetic, as you describe it, don't you think they are sophisticated enough to seek meaning according to their realm?

 

[axj]

Deep emotions that enter into the realm of the energetic, as you describe it, don't you think they are sophisticated enough to seek meaning according to their realm?

I am not sure what you mean exactly. Can you maybe give an example?

My suggestion was simply to pay close attention to what center or 'body' is involved and that 'surface' emotions are chemical, as the C's pointed out.

 

[Bluegazer]

I am not sure what you mean exactly. Can you maybe give an example?

My suggestion was simply to pay close attention to what center or 'body' is involved and that 'surface' emotions are chemical, as the C's pointed out.

It seems to me that the purpose of the thread is precisely to interpret with the tools of language emotions and/or sensations that are above the superficial emotions.

If you read some of the definitions I share in the links, you will see that the descriptive character of those emotions are reflexive and not necessarily the direct product of brain chemistry. In other words, these reflexive emotions could be part of the higher emotional center.